


Delirium: If Thou Be'st Born To Strange Sights

by FayJay



Series: Endless Days [3]
Category: Pirates of the Caribbean, The Sandman
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-04
Updated: 2009-05-04
Packaged: 2017-10-02 09:03:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FayJay/pseuds/FayJay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in which Captain Jack Sparrow encounters a most peculiar young lady, and meets a long-lost relative, and is perhaps a touch too forward with a goat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Delirium: If Thou Be'st Born To Strange Sights

**Author's Note:**

> I've made no particular attempt to make this version of Anansi gel with Gaiman's version, on the basis that Gaiman's 'verse allows for myriad versions of mythic figures anyway. I think that, even had I not read either _Anansi Boys_ or _American Gods_, the fact that Jack Sparrow is so much a trickster figure, and that the islanders take him for a god and paint eight eyes and a spider shape onto his face would have been more than enough reason to make the link.

She arrives on the second day, just like the last time. Captain Jack Sparrow is supremely unsurprised to find her sprawled in a boneless little pile of limbs and muddy tatters in the back of his dinghy, trailing her ink-spattered fingers in the water.

"You again," he says irritably, by way of greeting. "You do get about a bit, don't you?"

"Me again," she agrees, after a moment's consideration. Her hair has a disconcerting tendency to swirl up around her head as if borne by unseen currents, and its colour is as fluid and improbable as a trollop's affections. Jack is reasonably sure that pink and green are not natural shades for feminine follicles, but he decides not to mention this to her lest she do something more disconcerting still. Last time, if he remembers aright, she turned into a flock of parrots.

"I don't suppose you have any rum hidden in that rather eccentric get-up of yours, do you?" he asks, on the offchance. It doesn't seem very likely, all in all; she is wearing a dress made from fragments of tattered silk and fisherman's netting, scattered with odd scraps of this, that and the other. Jack notices feathers and beads, bottlecaps and twigs and butterflies and banana skins snared in her skirts, along with a host of other objects he has no name for, but nothing remotely resembling a bottle of rum. He tries not to notice the nipples that her dress conspicuously fails to hide, because it makes him feel like a dirty old man. Lechery is all well and good – and indeed right and proper for a pirate – but he has never had a taste for children.

She shakes her head, and her hair gets longer and snakier still. Jack winces a little at this further evidence of unnaturalness. "I could make you some, if you like," she says brightly. Her voice is husky and sharp and slurry by turns. "I'm good at making things. I once maked a whole castle out of sand and coloured sugar, with jelly babies for soldiers, but the sea washed it away."

"Go on then," says Jack, looking out over the windless sea. He has been floating on this millpond for two days without a sip of libation, and beggars can't be choosers when all the rum is gone. He watches out of the corner of his eye as she frowns in concentration and reaches into nothingness, and then his head swings around with unexpected delight when he sees the bottle appear. It is, admittedly, a rather unorthodox shape and colour, but rum is rum. "What's that supposed to be?" he asks, looking at the little blue and red manikin painted on the bottle.

"Spider Man," she says. "He bites a spider – or it bites him. I can't remember. But it changes him into something interesting, and then he has to wear tights in public, and fight goblins. Or maybe kryptonite." She frowns.

"Who tonight?" He isn't really listening. His fingers have closed around the bottle, which is made of some strange substance that is neither glass nor leather, and he is busy working out the stopper. It comes free at last with a satisfying pop, and he sniffs at the bottle suspiciously. Rum – or at least something in the general vicinity thereof. That will do nicely.

"What?"

"A toast," he says, lifting the bottle. "To Mister Spider." He knocks the bottle back.

An instant later he is choking on rum-scented soap bubbles.

"Whoops," says the girl, watching him cough and splutter and foam. "I think that might be the other one."

"Women!" gasps Jack with feeling some minutes later, when he has flung the treacherous bottle far out to sea and spat the last of the soap from his mouth, gargling with sea water.

"I'm not a woman," says the girl, looking wounded.

Jack shrugs. "Near enough," he says grumpily. He should have known better.

She is about to reply, but then her attention flits to his compass and her eyes grow round. She sits up and claps her hands.

"That's my sister's compass!" she exclaims. "He showed it to me once, but I couldn't make it work."

"It's mine," says Jack. Finders keepers. Then he replays her last sentence, and glances at her. "Who showed it to you?"

"My sister."

"You said 'he'."

"Yes. Sometimes she's a he."

Jack nods sagely. "I think I met her once, in Singapore. Him. Her. Does she do a rather surprising trick with a banana, while some big hairy bloke plays the drums?"

The girl looks thoughtful. "I don't think so," she says at last. "Mostly she prefers apples. Occasionally pomegranates." She crosses her legs and winds a curl of emerald hair around one finger. "I like orang-utans best. Their skins are all thick, and when you peel them the smell of the juice fills the whole room for ages and ages, and it gets into your hair and under your nails."

"That's oranges," says Jack helpfully. Then he frowns. "At least, I hope it is." They both look out at the quiet water for a little while. "Funny thing about the word 'orange'," he says after a bit. "There's no other word rhymes with it."

"Of course there is. Borange. Forange. Lorange. Zorange. See?" She shakes her head, and her hair curls in close to her skull. "You're not very clever, are you?" Jack pulls a face behind her back, while she peers down at the sea. "Is there a word that means sort of wanting to see a long lost family member, and sort of dreading it too because you know it will probably all end badly?"

Jack shrugs. "I wouldn't know, missy. My family's a little bit irregular about keeping to holidays and reunions and all that sort of wholesome jollification."

"But your grandpa keeps an eye on you," says the girl, poking the water with one hand. Her hair, Jack can't help but noticing, seems to have all but vanished, leaving her with nothing but multicoloured stubble. A moment later, a surprised-looking fish flaps out of the water on a pair of feathery seagull's wings. It is followed by several others, two with butterfly wings, five with bat wings, four with dragonfly wings and one tiny little beastie with wings a buzzing blur like a hummingbird's.

"If you say so, love," says Jack, leaning away from her. She's an odd one, and no mistake.

"Where do you belong?" she asks, without looking at him. Jack flinches. She turns around and peers over one pale shoulder, and as she does her hair unfurls into a cloud of ginger streaked with pink and yellow and turquoise and green. She is wearing a necklace of pink shells, crystalised angelica root and twitching starfish. Jack can't remember it being there before.

"Wherever I want," he says at last, his tone defensive. "With the sea rocking the boards beneath me feet, a salty breeze filling me sails and a bottle of rum in me hand. I belong on the open ocean, don't I? That's where. Free."

"Yes, but who do you belong to? Sometimes I think you're mine, but then you slip through my fingers and end up in the soft places of my brother's realm, and then scuttling crabs and undead sailors whisk you back to the world. My sister thinks you should be his."

"This is the one with the banana?" asks Jack, struggling to keep track.

"Apples," she corrects kindly. "He thinks all pirates are his. Although normal rats are my other sister's. I don't know what she feeds them. But my other other sister – who is always a sister, not the naked one but the one with the goldfish – she says you belong to my brother."

"The brother who's sometimes a sister?"

"No, the one with the funny eyes." She frowns. One of her eyes is blue, he notices, and the other one is green. He finds himself staring. "Not funny like a clown, though – unless it was a scary clown with stars in his eyes and skin like chalk and a voice that makes you shiver…so maybe funny like a clown, actually. But without the stripes and polka dots and the balloons made out of animals. And the squirty flower growing from his collar." She is sprawling on her back again now with her changeable hair spilling out over the boards, and she is watching him upside-down. "I don't think I like clowns," she adds, thoughtfully, looking up into the sky. "They get you all wet and they have too many names. Stratocalculus, cumulonimbleness…and it isn't true about the silver linings, because I've looked. But I do like the way they turn into new things. I like that. Anyway, she says that you live in my brother's realm, even when you're awake."

Jack blinks. He considers this, and then blinks again. "Not following you even a little bit, duckie," he confesses. "You and Mister Lucidity aren't even passing acquaintances, are you?"

"Because of the stories," she persists. "She says you love them best of all. And that they're the realest thing about you, even though they're not really real. Like me."

Jack nods and smiles. "Still making absolutely no sense whatsoever, darlin'. Incidentally, your necklace is starting to crawl away," he adds, watching one of the starfish try to inch its way across her collarbone and towards the sea. She touches it, and it turns into a slice of starfruit, which she nibbles at and then offers to Jack. He accepts it gingerly, sniffs it, licks it, and then swallows it whole. "Very decent of you," he says. "Now, I hope you don't mind my atrocious lack of hospitality, but I think I shall be lying down and giving in to the sunstroke and the dehydration, if it's all the same to you. Lovely of you to drop in. Do give my regards to the lovely lady with the banana, and to Mister Spider."

"You can tell him yourself," she says, but he is falling back now and everything is fading away, so he never does find out whether she means the sister-brother with the fruit fetish or the human spider with the funny clothes.

 

* * *

 

When he wakes up again, it is to the shock of cold salt water hitting his face, and the sound of an old man cackling. Jack Sparrow stares about him wildly. He is lying in the sand, with the sun glaring down into his face, and a wizened old man with skin like leather and a truly wicked expression is holding a dripping bucket over his head.

"You stink," says the old man bluntly. "Like a donkey fartin' through rum." Jack Sparrow opens his mouth and closes it again. He feels like a million tiny homunculi are pounding away inside his head with hammers and chisels, and a badger has died in his mouth. The old man laughs again. "You lookin' for the Fountain of Youth, ain't you?"

Despite his splitting skull, Jack Sparrow sits bolt upright. He wishes he hadn't at once, but bolt upright he sits nevertheless. "You know where it lies?" he asks.

The old man smiles toothlessly at him. "I know where it lie," he agrees.

Jack beams. Evidently Lady Luck has smiled on him after all, and the currents have carried him to the very island he seeks. "Then you, sir, are quite me favourite hallucination in ages. I don't suppose you happen to have a stoop of rum anywhere to hand, now, do you?" The old man passes him a bottle. Jack, recalling the unpleasant taste of soap (whether real or imagined) all too vividly, wets his fingers with the contents, licks one fingertip cautiously, then takes a happy swig. "That's the ticket. Now, whereabouts would a person find this magical spring, if he happened to be of an inquisitive and acquisitive nature?"

"That another question, boy," says the old man, taking back his bottle. Jack doesn't let go, but the old man has a surprisingly strong grip, and he gets his bottle back just the same.

Jack watches the rum receding from his grasp with a woebegone expression, and then looks up at his rescuer. "So I can't help but notice that me pistol and me sword and me compass and me hat all seem to have vanished from about me person," he says conversationally.

"Really? That a terrible shame. You should take better care of your things," says the old man, with a twinkle in his eye.

Jack gets slowly to his feet. He can see his dinghy now, moored a little way down the beach. He makes a little exclamation of delight as his eye falls upon the familiar shape of his hat, a few feet away, and he darts forward to pick it up. His skull is still pounding, his eyeballs feel like they've been rubbed with sand and his mouth is dryer than a nun in the middle of a desert, but the world fits more comfortably around him when he has his hat nestled snugly on his head. His gun and his sword and his compass are gone, as is his precious Pearl, but at least he still has his hat. He can handle whatever comes next. He glances back at the old man, and is startled by a sudden and acute sense of familiarity.

"Have we met?" Jack asks, fumbling through memories to no avail.

"No," says the old man, smiling to himself. "But I know all about you, 'Captain' Jack Sparrow. Oh yes. I know all about you."

The cackle, Jack thinks, is going to grow very old very soon. He rather misses Mister Cotton. "You have the advantage of me."

"You never said a truer word, Sparrow boy," says the old man, grinning. "You can call me Old Man Nancy."

"Nancy's a girl's name," says Jack, sounding very much like a five year old and not caring in the slightest.

"And it my name. Sparrow's a bird's name, unless I much mistaken. Not everything in this world is what it seem, Jackie. You should know that by now."

"Oh, God. Here we go again," groans Jack. "Why can't it ever be straightforward?"

"Now where's the fun in that?" asks Old Man Nancy. And in his heart of hearts, Jack agrees that he has a point.

 

* * *

 

"…and then they made me their chief," Jack concludes, around a mouthful of rice and peas. "Believing me to be both a god and a delicacy, for theirs was a decidedly culinary theology."

Nancy nods, his expression thoughtful. "And you say they paint eight eyes on you face, and a fat little spider on you nose with one leg leading to each eye? Almost like they took you for some kind of spider god bound in human form."

"Ridiculous, eh?" agreed Jack, taking a slug of rum. "Some folks'll believe anything."

"That true," says Nancy gravely. "That very true." He is watching Jack with an odd intensity that might disconcert a man who had seen fewer disconcerting things than Captain Jack Sparrow has seen. There is something strangely familiar about the old man, something Jack can't quite put his finger on. He expects it will come to him soon.

"Anyway, after a while I decided I was bored with all that chiefing lark, so I tricked 'em into going searching for more firewood to make a truly ginormous pyre on which to cook me, and then I legged it, rescuing me crew and the eunuch on the way back to the Pearl. They were a bit gutted, of course, all me followers, but that's religion for you, innit?"

"That a stupid religion, an' no mistake. Why them think any god going to want freein' from him human form? Gods can't have no fun, if them floatin' around being some big idea in people's heads. They need them mouths for eatin' and drinkin' and kissin', and arms and legs and other parts for doing more than kissin'. No god in him right mind goin' to want that kind of freedom."

Jack shrugs, setting his beads a-jingling. "You've obviously never met Calypso, mate," he says. He does not notice Nancy's expression. "Anyway, we was talking about this here fountain of youth, before the subject strayed to barbecue seasoning. You was about to tell me where I might find it."

"Was I now?"

"You was." Jack infuses his smile with ever jot of charm he possesses, and is a trifle surprised to find it bouncing off Old Man Nancy like water off a seagull's back. Mister Nancy scoops another handful of rice from the pot, eats it with obvious enjoyment and then gives a contented belch. He watches Jack Sparrow like a well-fed cat eyeing a mouse and wondering whether the pleasure of hunting and tormenting and finally devouring the little morsel is worth the effort of getting up from a warm and grassy spot.

"And what you goin' offer me in exchange for this precious water, Jack Sparrow?" he asks at last, with a distinctly predatory smile.

"The pleasure of me company?" ventures Jack.

"Ha! The pleasure of havin' me food ate and me rum drunk up?" Nancy flings his head back and cackles, his whole body shaking with mirth. He pounds his fist on the sand. "That no pleasure at all, Jack Sparrow! You goin' have to do better than that, you wants to live forever."

Jack reaches over and snags the rum, watching Mister Nancy through kohl-rimmed eyes and wondering what kind of mess he's about to jump into. "What did you have in mind, exactly?" he asks.

Nancy smiles. "I thought you never goin' to ask, boy."

 

* * *

 

"That has to be deep enough, old man." Jack Sparrow is dripping with sweat and out of breath and ready to call it all a day. He doesn't really need to live forever. He's fairly certain that he's already spent the lion's share of forever a-digging of this hole for the old man, and there's no magical water in sight. Right now he'd settle for plain, regular, unremarkable water and be glad of it. Right now that sounds even better than rum.

"Not yet."

If this is an honest day's work, Jack wants none of it. He's spent a lifetime avoiding the horror of doing an honest day's work, and he'd happily spend another lifetime continuing to avoid said misery. He thinks it is extremely unfair that this wiry little old geezer is forcing him to grunt and sweat and heave like some kind of idiot landlubber. He is a captain, after all. He has his reputation to consider.

"Now? Is it done now?"

"Not yet, Jackie," crows Nancy. "Not yet."

"This is embarrassing," mutters Jack Sparrow, to no-one in particular. "I'm a pirate. I'm a bloody pirate!" he repeats, yelling it this time. "This is not a task becoming to my station as a pirate captain."

"How can you be captain without a ship?" asked Nancy, his tone companionable. He is lying in a hammock between two palm trees, rocking gently in the shade of their leaves. Jack nearly drops the shovel. He stands quite still at the bottom of the hole, his face contorting into a whole array of different expressions.

"I have a ship," he says at last. "A beautiful ship. A swift ship. A ship worth selling one's soul for, a ship that can carry a man back from beyond the grave. A pearl beyond price."

"Don't see no ship," replies Nancy. "Just see that little dinghy. Man can't be captain of a dinghy."

"I have a ship! I've just temporarily mislaid her! But I am still her captain!" Jack Sparrow realises that he is yelling, and takes a deep breath. "I have a ship," he repeats, more calmly.

"If you a captain with no ship, I think I goin' be king. Ain't got no throne, but then you got no ship."

"Fine. Wonderful. Congratulations. And now, your majesty, will your majesty be so kind as to deign to tell this humble servant whether the bloody latrine is deep enough yet?" He knows he is shouting again, but Jack feels that he has been patient for a long time now.

Nancy cracks one eye open and glances at the hole. He can just see the very tip of Jack's hat. "It do," he says, in the tone of a monarch granting a mighty boon.

"About time!" snarls Jack, and he scrabbles up out of the hole. "So, then – the fountain?" he asks, panting and peering down at Old Man Nancy still rocking in his hammock.

Nancy opens one eye and looks up at him. He smiles. Jack's heart sinks into his boots. "We have that conversation after you do me another little favour, boy," he says, cool as you please.

Jack Sparrow stares down at the old man. Hector Barbossa, he knows perfectly well, would not have gone digging up any holes in the ground to get information out of the old man. The only holes Hector would have been making would have been the kind that a person made with a pistol. Now, granted Jack Sparrow does not presently have a pistol, or indeed a sword, but he is still younger and stronger than Old Man Nancy, and he can certainly hurt him pretty badly, if he's a mind to. Hell, he has a shovel in his hand right now, and he could bring it down on the old man's head, or on his brittle ankles, or slam it into his soft little belly, and make the old boy tell him where this wretched fountain lies.

But he's never been fond of violence, and Old Man Nancy reminds him oddly of his old mum.

Jack sighs. "What favour?" he asks.

 

* * *

 

"You're not serious, mate." Jack looks up and up and up, then down again to stare at Old Man Nancy. The old man grins toothlessly back at him and nods. "But there aren't any rungs, or knots, or, or – look here," protests Jack, "I am not a monkey!"

"You telling me a pirate captain, who practically born in the Crow's Nest, who spend all day jumpin' up and down the rigging of him ship, is scared of climbin' one little tree?" Mister Nancy's tone is all scornful incredulity.

Jack bridles. "It might have escaped your notice, but there aren't any trees at sea, what with it being, you know, THE SEA. And I'm not scared of climbing the tree, obviously, because trees don't shoot a person or try to bite their leg off or lock them up in a cheerless little cell to await their execution, trees just sit there being trees, which is hardly what I'd call a threatening kind of pursuit. I'm simply pointing out that sailors belong on ships and monkeys belong in trees. Especially flea-ridden little furballs what dress like human beings and cozy up to treacherous, ship-thieving first mates, and what have the audacity to steal a man's name. Monkeys climb trees. I'm not a monkey, ergo I'm not climbing up said tree. QED." He crosses his arms in front of his chest, sticks out his chin and makes a stand. He has his pride, and Jack Sparrow is not going to be shinning up palm trees to fetch coconuts like some chittering little subhuman banana-eater. No indeed.

"Okay," says Mister Nancy equably, and he turns and makes his crablike way back towards the hammock.

Jack watches him for a few moments. "Okay?" he repeats. Mister Nancy nods, and flaps a hand back at him, and keeps on walking. Jack chews his bottom lip. "Good! Right! That's more like it!" says Jack, wondering why this doesn't feel more like a victory. He watches Mister Nancy heave himself nimbly into the hammock. "Um," he says, and then scurries over the sand to peer down at the old man's smiling face. Mister Nancy's eyes are closed, and he looks for all the world like he's deep in a delicious dream already, but Captain Jack Sparrow isn't about to fall for that one. "So about this fountain…" says Jack, hopefully.

"You harvest me coconuts, we talk about the fountain," says Mister Nancy, without opening his eyes. Jack wrings his hands in the air, opens and closes his mouth, and then turns and stomps off towards the palm trees.

 

* * *

 

"So then, about this fountain…" says Jack once more, mopping his brow with his dirty sleeve.

"You want to know where lie the fountain of youth, what keep a man from ever dying? What keep him young and strong and handsome, so him can sail the seven seas from now until judgment day?"

"Yes please. I'd like to know the whereabouts of that little fountain, please, if it isn't too much trouble, now that I've dug you a lovely new latrine and harvested you all these fine and delicious coconuts for your eating pleasure. Fair's fair, eh, Mister Nancy? You scratch my back and I scratch yours? Or rather, I slave and skivvy and sweat for you and then you grant me one tiny little piece of information what it costs you nothing to share?" Jack tries to look winsome. Mister Nancy laughs out loud.

"Then I tell you where it lie."

"Thank you! Sir, you are a gentleman and a scholar and I shall be very much in your debt." Jack beams, and waits.

"After you milk me goat for me."

Jack's face falls. "After I…?"

"After you milk me goat."

Well, Jack thinks to himself, that doesn't sound too tricky. Granted it's a trifle disappointing, since he had rather thought he was on the brink of discovering the location of the fountain…but how difficult can it be to milk a goat, when all's said and done? People do it all the time. He looks around. "That goat?" he asks, espying a pale-coloured beastie masticating on a clump of scrubby grass.

"That goat," agrees Mister Nancy, with a smile.

 

* * *

 

After the ninth time the goat has knocked him flat on his back, Jack decides just to lie there for a little while, and contemplate the sky. Goats, as it turns out, are less amenable to being milked – or indeed approached – than he has been led to expect. He's seen people milking goats, and said goats have generally just stood there placidly and allowed said people to do said milking, and there has been much less of this running-at-the-person-with-head-down-and-horns-pointing business. Actually, there has been rather less of this long-horn-having, now he comes to think of it. Generally the kinds of goats one encounters on board a ship are rather less spiky in the head region, and rather more mild of disposition. Possibly they are a different species, he speculates.

The goat starts to chew on his boot. Jack kicks it. It backs off.

Perhaps a person needs to bribe a goat with some kind of goat delicacy, before a goat will submit to being milked, ponders Jack. Perhaps the goat wants to be wooed.

He gets slowly to his feet and stomps off in search of delicious things for goats. Delicious things that he is not currently wearing.

In his hammock, Old Man Nancy sips rum and coconut juice from a coconut shell, and cackles to himself quietly.

 

* * *

 

The goat accepts the mixture of leaves and flowers with a deeply suspicious expression in its yellow eyes.

"There's a good goat," says Captain Jack as it starts to chew, sidling closer and sliding the bucket under the goat's belly. "There's a good little demonic beastie." He eyes the udders, which strike him as being rather malformed. Not that he is an expert on matters agricultural. "Now let's get some milk for Old Man Nancy, so Captain Jack can have him some of this magical water and live forever."

He grabs the udders, or rather udder, and squeezes it hopefully.

In his hammock, Old Man Nancy's cackling increases tenfold.

 

* * *

 

"So where's me milk, then?" asks Mister Nancy, some time later.

Jack Sparrow eyes him narrowly. "The goat did not co-operate," he says at last. "The goat was, indeed, singularly disinclined to produce milk. I'd go so far as to suggest that this goat might be incapable of being milked. Indeed, were I of a more suspicious nature I might even be tempted to ask whether perhaps milking might be a biological impossibility for this particular goat." He glares.

Old Man Nancy's mouth twitches. They both look down at the goat, which is rubbing its head affectionately against Jack Sparrow's leg. "Look like he like you," says Mister Nancy, mildly.

Jack Sparrow stands still and quietly considers a range of possible replies. "Yes," he settles on at last. "Yes, I think we can safely say that he likes me. 'He' being the most salient word in that sentence."

Old Man Nancy nods. "So no milk then?

"No milk," agrees Jack Sparrow, with restraint.

"That a pity." Mister Nancy heads back towards his hammock, whistling to himself.

Jack lopes along after him, with the goat trotting along behind. "So? So what now? What about the fountain? We had a deal, old man!"

"You didn't milk me goat."

"I did!" Jack scrubs his hands on his shirt for the dozenth time. "I most certainly did!"

"Don't see no milk."

"That's because there was no milk to be had!" splutters Jack. "As you knew perfectly well when you set me the task! Your goat is not of the milk-producing persuasion, no more than you or I, mate! But if ever a man tried to get milk out of an unmilkable goat, then that man is me, and this is that goat, and an honourable person really ought to reward such an exceptional indignity by sharing the location of the fountain of youth with that poor, beleaguered, billy-goat-milking-man!"

Old Man Nancy laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs. Then he sprawls in his hammock with his hands behind his head, and grins up at Jack Sparrow. "I like you, boy," he says at last. "I think you the best of me grandchildren." Jack stares. Then he stares some more. "Lot of them turned out kind of boring, but you not boring. You make me laugh lot more than your mother ever did. So I'm thinking that even though you did not get milk from me goat, maybe you deserve some kind of reward."

"Yes!" agrees Jack, latching on to this as the most immediately important part of Mister Nancy's little speech, and leaving the rest to be considered at a later date. "Reward! Yes! Quite right too!" The goat rubs its cheek against Jack's thigh, and Jack jumps and moves away from it. The goat, undeterred, follows him and nuzzles again.

"The fountain of youth lie…" says Mister Nancy, slowly, watching Jack's face.

Jack leans forward. "Yes? Where? Where does it lie?"

"…on another island."

Jack Sparrow stands quite still for a long moment, looking down at Old Man Nancy. "On another island," he says at last.

"Yes. On another island."

"I see," says Jack Sparrow.

Mister Nancy grins. "But thank you for helpin' a poor old man with him latrine and him coconuts. And him goat."

"Grandfather, you say," says Jack Sparrow. Old Man Nancy nods. Jack sighs. "Well, that makes a rather hideous sort of sense, I suppose." Old Man Nancy nods again. "Right. Well, this has been a lovely little reunion, I feel we've bonded in a deep, profound, spiritual fashion, but much as I've enjoyed the experience I fear I must be on me way. People to see, places to go, billygoats to avoid like the plague."

Mister Nancy laughs again. "You sure you don't want to take the goat with you?" he calls, as Jack stomps off towards his dinghy. The goat follows him.

"Quite sure, thank you," says Jack, quickening his pace.

"I think he goin' miss you."

"The feeling is most emphatically not mutual, I assure you," mutters Jack, untying the dinghy and pushing it out to sea. The goat bleats unhappily and makes as if to jump into the boat, and Jack fixes it with a steely glare. "You get in here, Mister Goat, and you're going to end up curried faster than you can say 'irritating relations'," he says. The goat backs away, and Jack scrambles up over the side and into the dinghy.

As the currents carry him away from the island, Jack's eyes roam around the inside of the dinghy and fall upon an interesting little pile. He pokes it with his foot, and when it fails to bite him or turn into a cloud of parrots, he reaches down and investigates further. Under a tattered scrap of canvas he finds: his sword, his pistol, his compass, three large waterskins full of water, a bottle of rum, and three coconuts.

Jack squints back at the beach and discerns one little stick-like arm waving at him from the hammock. He grins, and waves back.

"Grandfather, eh?" he murmurs to himself. "Well that's a new one." Then he picks up the bottle of rum in one hand and the compass in the other, and thinks very hard about the fountain of youth

FINIS


End file.
